On this Thursday, of which I was telling you, at three o’clock, Mr. Pultney rose up, and moved for a secret committee of twenty-one.  This inquisition, this council of ten, was to sit and examine whatever persons and papers they should please, and to meet when and where they pleased.  He protested much on its not being intended against any person, but merely to give the King advice, and on this foot they fought it till ten at night, when Lord Perceval blundered out what they had been cloaking with so @much art, and declared that he should vote for it as a committee of accusation.  Sir Robert immediately rose, and protested that he should not have spoken, but for what he had heard last; but that now, he must take it to himself.  He portrayed the malice of the Opposition, who, for twenty years, had not been able to touch him, and were now reduced to this infamous shift.  He defied them to accuse him, and only desired that if they should, might be in an open and fair manner:  desired no favour, but to be acquainted with his accusation.  He spoke of Mr. Doddington, who had called his administration infamous, as of a person of great self-mortification, who, for sixteen years, had condescended to bear part of the odium.  For Mr. Pultney, who had just spoken a second time, Sir R. said, he had begun the debate with great calmness, but give him his due, he had made amends for it in the end.  In short, never was innocence so triumphant.

There were several glorious speeches on both sides:  Mr. Pultney’s two, W. Pitt’s (423) and George Grenville’s,(424) Sir Robert’s, Sir W. Yonge’s, Harry Fox’s, (425) Mr. Chute’s, and the Attorney-General’s.(426) My friend Coke, for the first time, spoke vastly well, and mentioned how great Sir Robert’s character is abroad. ’ Sir Francis Dashwood replied, that he had found quite the reverse from Mr. Coke, and that foreigners always spoke with contempt of the Chevalier de Walpole.  That was going too far, and he was called to order, but got off well enough, by saying, that he knew it was contrary to rule to name any member, but that he only mentioned it as spoken by an impertinent Frenchman.

But of all speeches, none ever was so full of wit as Mr. Pultney’s last.  He said, “I have heard this committee represented as a most dreadful spectre; it has been likened to all terrible things; it has been likened to the King; to the inquisition; it will be a committee of safety; it is a committee of danger; I don’t know what it is to be!  One gentleman, I think, called it a cloud! (this was the Attorney) a cloud!  I remember Hamlet takes Lord Polonius by the hand and shows him a cloud, and then asks him if he does not think it is like a whale.”  Well, in short, at eleven at night we divided, and threw out this famous committee by 253 to 250, the greatest number that ever was in the house, and the greatest number that ever lost a question.